Walpole selectmen, finance committee debate trash contract

The Board of Selectmen and the Finance Committee couldn’t see eye to eye during a debate about the selectmen’s decision to decline a contract for single-stream recycling.

Selectmen held a joint meeting with the committee on Monday night.

“What I feel the selectmen didn’t do was show leadership in a situation where the finances were pretty clear," Finance Committee member Susan Lawson said. "I didn’t hear one argument that makes sense. I am very disappointed and it will cost the town a lot of money.”

Selectmen agreed that they would have liked to have a lot more time before making a decision, but despite that they believe they made the correct one by rejecting the service. Selectmen voted against the trash contract that included single-stream at a meeting in early January.

With single-stream, residents would no longer have to separate their recycled materials. The idea is that by making this switch more people would be apt to recycle more often. This would ideally result in less trash tipping fees and more money for the town.

“One of my biggest regrets about the trash is not timing it out a little better,” Town Administrator Jim Johnson said.

Johnson said that the current contract that includes dual-stream recycling would be voted on at Town Meeting. Voting it down, he pointed out, would have repercussions.

“Walpole will be out of the trash business at least for part of, if not all of fiscal 2018, and residents will be responsible for picking up their own trash. … I don’t think the residents will be too happy,” he said.

Selectman David Salvatore agreed that the town needs to start doing a better job of recycling, but sees too many flaws in the single-stream system that led him to vote against it in January.

“The commodity market for recyclables has plummeted,” he said.

He cited studies that refer to “contamination” within the single-stream system. Wet paper and bits of glass that break up and become too small are unable to be separated from each other, he said.

Those studies indicate that when recyclables are mixed, paper picks up food and beverage particles and as a result deteriorates the quality of the recycled product. Small glass shards work their way into the paper and are impossible to separate.

As a result, said Salvatore, many companies that use recycled materials have become picky about the quality of goods that they receive. It’s cheaper and more efficient for companies to use fresh plastic, and part of this, he said, is because of the price that comes with this type of contamination.

“When your single-stream recycled material gets to these recycling places and it's contaminated in any way, more and more they’re sending it away,” he said. “In some municipalities the recycling guys don’t even go to their plant anymore, they go right to the landfill because they know their load is contaminated.”

Selectman Nancy Mackenzie said that much of her reason for voting against single-stream recycling is due to the fact that recycling is currently free and unlimited in town.

“We don’t pay for recycling right now. So that would be the board locking us into paying for something we have gotten for free and have no limit on,” she said. "I don’t think it’s a good long-term fix for the town.”

She advocated for spending some money and making the town’s recycling service weekly instead of bi-weekly. She also said that re-educating residents on the importance of recycling could very well bring trash tonnage down and recycling up. This would help reach the financial goal that the town is trying to accomplish by switching to single-stream, she said.

Scott Calzolaio can be reached by email at scalzolaio@wickedlocal.com, by phone at 774-804-2588, or on Twitter @ScottCaz.